Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Hold up,” he whispered. “They’ll postpone you. Are you better? Can you go through with it?”

He nodded vaguely and turned to the candle. Yes, there was no mistake. Something was there; something played in the tiny flame, curled in the minute wreath of smoke. Some evil presence was in the chapel, on the very altar of God. He felt a chill creeping over him, though he knew the room was warm. His soul seemed paralyzed, but he kept his eyes riveted on the candle. He knew that he must watch it. There was no one else to do it. He must not take his eyes from it. The line of novices rose, and he mechanically reached his feet.

“Per omnia saecula, saeculorum. Amen.”

Then he felt suddenly that something corporeal was missing—his last earthly support. He realized what it was. The man on his left had gone out, overwrought and shaken. Then it began. Something before had attacked the roots of his faith; had matched his world-sense against his God-sense; had brought, he had thought, every power to bear against him; but this was different. Nothing was denied, nothing was offered. It could best be described by saying that a great weight seemed to press down upon his innermost soul, a weight that had no essence, mental or physical. A whole spiritual realm, evil in its every expression, engulfed him. He could not think, he could not pray. As in a dream he heard the voices of the men beside him singing, but they were far away, farther away from him than anything had ever been before. He existed on a plane where there was no prayer, no grace; where he realized only that the forces around him were of hell and where the single candle contained the essence of evil. He felt himself alone pitted against an infinity of temptation. He could bring no parallel to it in his own experience or any other. One fact he knew: one man had succumbed to this weight and he must not—must not. He must look at the candle and look and look until the power that filled it and forced him into this plane died forever for him. It was now or not at all.